MindShift Podcasts
Welcome to the first episode of The Dismantling Doctrine Podcast for 2025!
This inaugural episode features a catch-up conversation with two old friends, Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman. They are the authors of the classic 1978 work on cults and mind control entitled Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change.
Their research into cult psychology and tactics led them, in the late 1970s and early 80s, to investigate what was then the nascent Christian Right’s involvement in American politics. They also noticed how much evangelicalism and fundamentalist Christianity had in common with the world of the cults.
Currently they’ve released an update to their original 1982 book Holy Terror: The Fundamentalist War on America’s Freedoms in Religion, Politics, and Our Private Lives. The “classic edition,” which is now available, gives the reader new perspectives on the evangelical involvement in the Trump era.
Also available on Apple Podcasts, YouTube and LibSyn.
From Dr. Clint Heacock —
March 28, 2021
In this fantastic bonus episode, returning guests Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman
— authors of the classics Snapping and Holy Terror — take us on a trip back in time … to the origins of the Christian Right, with a close assessment of the various strategies that were used to sway and influence millions of impressionable evangelicals to get involved in politics.
What’s perhaps not so surprising? The playbook that many of the architects of the Christian Right constructed decades ago is still in operation. The current evangelical Trump base, for example, is an extension of the work that these key players installed decades ago.
We also look at the impact these strategies had on the individual evangelical. We’ll explore the story of Diane, “the first ex-evangelical,” that Flo and Jim encountered in their travels across America researching this movement.
From Dr. Clint Heacock —
May 22, 2020
I apologize in advance for the long title, but when you hear this show, I promise it will be worth the listen!
This week’s guests are the legendary returning guests, Conway & Siegelman. They wrote the hugely important and influential books Snapping in 1978 and then, just a few years later, came out with Holy Terror.
With their incredible, on-the-ground field research, they were among the first to track and study in depth the “cult phenomenon” of the 1970s, and then later the rise of the Christian Right in the late 1970s-80s.
In this episode we’ll cover a lot of ground, so strap yourself in and hold on!
From Dr. Clint Heacock —
June 28, 2019
This episode features hugely informative and insightful information with two of my personal heroes, Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, in New York City.
Authors of the massively influential books Snapping and Holy Terror, Conway & Siegelman have for decades been recognized as two of the foremost experts and investigators on the world of both the cults and Christian fundamentalism.
Specifically, we discuss the phenomena of “snapping” and “information disease” and find out how Christian fundamentalism’s current bid for political power started back in the late 1970s and continues today using, and abusing, information and communication techniques — just like the cults!